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I don't think it's just cycle infrastructure. In the UK we seem unable to do all infrastructure, it's not an engineering problem because as another comment has

I don't think it's just cycle infrastructure. In the UK we seem unable to do all infrastructure, it's not an engineering problem because as another comment has pointed out we have world class scientists and engineers, it must be a political and management problem. Compared to countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, we seem to just bodge our infrastructure rather than properly design it. I think a large part of the problem comes from not having enough people with science/engineering backgrounds at high levels within politics, the civil service and local authorities. There is also the fact that science/engineering lacks respect and prestige in the UK.

dangravell 9y ago
At the political level, short term dogma triumphs. It is more important to be seen saving money now than _potentially_ saving money and improving living conditions in the future. There is a distrust in design; it's the market that is always right, isn't it? And the ruling generation is _very_ pro car; it gave them a freedom that they witnessed growing up.
mattmanser 9y ago
In Nottingham our planning department seems obsessed with traffic lights. Positively anti-roundabout. They get rid of them whenever they can and litter every road with tons of traffic lights. I think at one point we counted 12 traffic lights between our flat and the train station, a 5 minute drive away without all the traffic lights. There's even one roundabout that they turned into a traffic light hell and it keeps getting redesigned slightly because it sucks, but that just means for the last 10 years there's almost always some sort of works on it yet the west end of Woolaton road is just a constant traffic jam in rush hour: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Nottingham/@52.9549769,-1.1930636,17.58z https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Nottingham/@52.9549769,-... I used to live in Essex, where they were extremely pro-roundabout, even to the point of introducing a roundabout made up of roundabouts: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Colchester/@51.8841752,0.9327179,17.25z https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Colchester/@51.8841752,0... That two planning departments in the same country can have such fundamentally different philosophies, that there's no consensus and still no consensus 20 years since I moved, boggles my mind.

dangravell 9y ago

At the political level, short term dogma triumphs. It is more important to be seen saving money now than _potentially_ saving money and improving living conditions in the future. There is a distrust in design; it's the market that is always right, isn't it? And the ruling generation is _very_ pro car; it gave them a freedom that they witnessed growing up.

mattmanser 9y ago

In Nottingham our planning department seems obsessed with traffic lights. Positively anti-roundabout. They get rid of them whenever they can and litter every road with tons of traffic lights. I think at one point we counted 12 traffic lights between our flat and the train station, a 5 minute drive away without all the traffic lights. There's even one roundabout that they turned into a traffic light hell and it keeps getting redesigned slightly because it sucks, but that just means for the last 10 years there's almost always some sort of works on it yet the west end of Woolaton road is just a constant traffic jam in rush hour: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Nottingham/@52.9549769,-1.1930636,17.58z https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Nottingham/@52.9549769,-... I used to live in Essex, where they were extremely pro-roundabout, even to the point of introducing a roundabout made up of roundabouts: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Colchester/@51.8841752,0.9327179,17.25z https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Colchester/@51.8841752,0... That two planning departments in the same country can have such fundamentally different philosophies, that there's no consensus and still no consensus 20 years since I moved, boggles my mind.